If you are experiencing troubles with registration, please refer to our updated guide.

Feature Highlights

Although APEX 1.2 is the first APEX release to feature PhysX 3 support (SDK 3.2 specifically), standalone variant, compatible with SDK 2.8.4, is also available for developers who haven’t upgraded their physics integration to a new engine, but still want to take advantage of the new capabilities of APEX 1.2.

Addition of SDK 3.2 support is distinctive feature of this release, which not only allows developers utilizing the PhysX 3 engine to implement APEX in their games, but also brings all the advancements present in 3.x branch of PhysX SDK.

However, currently there is feature parity for core APEX functionality between the 2.8.4 and 3.2 ports, for most part.

Updated APEX SDK 1.2.1, which will add several missing features, like GPU Rigid Bodies support for 3.x branch, will be available shortly.

If you are watching over PhysX SDK 3 development process, you may now that all-purpose cloth simulation engine, which can be found in SDK 2.x, was replaced by new specialized PxCloth clothing solver in SDK 3.

Particularly interesting detail was revealed during “Mastering DX11 with Unity” (PDF) talk – NVIDIA APEX framework will be added to popular Unity game engine, which is currently using modified PhysX SDK 2.8.3 as physics engine.

A short demo (bus smashing through propane shop) of basic APEX Destruction module usage was presented, followed by promises to expand integration on other APEX modules in the future.

Next presentation, “Enhancing Games with Clothing and Destruction” is absolutely indentical to Game Technology Theather talk of the same name, we have reviewed it earlier.

In this video we show our new destruction prototype. Here, piec fractures pieces on the fly. There is no limit of how many times pieces can be fractured. Also, the fracture pattern depends on the impact location.

To simulate the massive amount of rigid bodies we use GRBs – GPU accelerated rigid boides.

Wooly character contains 840 000 particles simulated as 100 000 invidual strands of fur and is running on new solver that is currently under active research.

Real-time fracturing will be nice addition to the APEX Destruction module, which, currently, is utilizing only pre-fractured meshes. Fracturing happening in real-time, accordingly to impact force and point of damage application will certanly make destruction look more natural and immersive.

In comparison to APEX 1.0 Beta, new version includes many bugfixes, several additions to underlying framework and various new features, like ability to calculate rigid body physics on GPU.

APEX 1.1 contains only Destruction and Clothing modules, and is still based on PhysX SDK 2.8.4.6 – first version with PhysX 3 support is going to be APEX 1.2 (that is supposed to be released in a few months).

NVIDIA has revealed presentations schedule for Game Developers Conference 2012 (GDC 2012), taking place on March 5-9 in San Francisco.

As usually, certain talks will be demonstrating latest advances in PhysX and APEX technologies. Let’s take a look:

March 7th, Booth #1424

3dsMax with MassFX

11:00am - 12:00pm. Chris Murray, Autodesk

Autodesk’s implementation of MassFX within 3dsMax will show you just how easy the workflow is for rigid body dynamics and how versatile to the tool can be. Additionally, Autodesk will be giving a technology preview of some aspects of MassFX currently being experimented with in 3dsMax.

IKinema IK for Combining Physics and Animation in Maya

2:00pm - 3:00pm. Alexandre Pechev, IKinema

IKinema is a production-proven solution for animating with inverse kinematics (IK) in Maya. Come see how we combine IKinema IK with NVIDIA’s PhysX Plugin for Maya to produce animations that can capture a character’s intent and physical simulation at with an improved speed and accuracy over handmade animations. Dressing the character with APEX Clothing can add even more dramatic physical effects and secondary motion to your film or game.